


Forever

by Nebulad



Series: Sea of Stars [15]
Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Angst, F/M, Fluff, Post-War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-12
Updated: 2015-10-12
Packaged: 2018-04-26 02:30:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,141
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4986652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nebulad/pseuds/Nebulad
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He dreamt that he found her. He dreamt that she did what she'd done when Sovereign's leg had busted through the window of the Presidium, when he'd thought she'd died defeating the geth. He imagined her climbing over the rubble of the Presidium, ready to face to Council and ready to fall against him. He had his own leg in the dream as well and was able to lift her and help her to the medbay. </p><p>When he woke up his neck hurt in addition to his leg, and he pulled himself to his feet robotically. His cot was uncomfortable on a regular day- Faust had all but insisted he go up to the captain's cabin and make himself comfortable with her, but he couldn't now that she wasn't there.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Forever

Garrus passed out a few minutes after Javik hauled his ass back onto the Normandy, under the full expectations that he was going to die. He was taller and heavier than anyone else on the ship, so there was almost no way that they’d be able to get him to the medbay in time to prevent his stump leg from bleeding out. It didn’t matter a whole lot- the way he figured, Faust was gunna die too. _When a turian hears a bad order, they follow it,_ he’d told her once. _There may be some grumbling, but they follow it._ He’d followed her order to leave her within spitting distance of a Reaper, though she knew he would have followed her (leg or no leg- well, definitely no leg but…).

He’d underestimated the level of teamwork that people were willing to use even in a high stress situation. It would have made him proud if he hadn’t come to with the Normandy hovering in the space over Earth, no one knowing quite what to do. The bleeding was stopped on his leg so he demanded an update-

-and they gave him one because Faust had somehow made him the XO of the goddamn ship.

 _Commander_ Vakarian had never worked out before- he’d gotten his squad killed, and Palaven had been among the first planets to be taken by the Reapers- but he was all they had so Chakwas had hesitantly allowed Javik to fill him in on what was going on. “The Crucible isn’t firing,” he said with precision neutrality. “The Commander made it to the Citadel and the Alliance informed her of the issue. No one has heard from her since.”

Chakwas would _not_ allow him to stand up. He wanted to _pace_ and he wanted to shoot something- he wished he’d never left Earth, never left the smouldering ruin of London. She was going to die on a planet that wasn’t even hers, and she was going to die alone. The very first time he had left her in this battle and it was going to kill her.

He tried the comm, his heart thudding in his chest. His head rushed violently, his blood loss making itself known. Chakwas insisted on trying to set him up with a transfusion (Faust had stocked the Normandy with as much donated blood as she felt comfortable taking, just in case someone on the ship was bleeding out) and eventually she got her wish simply because he wasn’t strong enough to fight her off.

He passed out again, marking himself as the worst XO in history. When Hackett gave the order to get out of range of Earth and the Citadel, Joker made the decision to do so without picking up Shepard.

_(Garrus would have decided the same. He couldn’t condemn her ship to death because he couldn’t stand the thought of trying to learn to live without her again)_

. . . . .

They fitted Garrus with a prosthetic as soon as possible, and he went right to the remains of the Citadel to start digging. She had to be there somewhere, and if anyone was going to find her it was going to be _him._ His last apology for leaving her behind, for offering her nothing better than an _I love you_ that he had barely been able to choke out of his throat.

His arms ached and the prosthetic was unimaginably painful- Tali shortly informed him that he should sit down for a few minutes, but he figured she hadn’t really thought that he would actually do it. He just kept digging through the rubble, wondering where she had even ended up. Zakera Ward was levelled, the Presidium wasn’t much better, and he didn’t have the entire layout of the station memorized.

He revisited her apartment, or what was left of the Silversun Strip. He couldn’t access where her apartment had been- one of the giant neon screens advertising one thing or another had collapsed, along with the casino where they’d danced together and the arcade where she’d once stayed up all night trying to figure out that mech game.

She probably wasn’t there anyway. What were the chances that the Reapers had installed their control panel inside Commander Shepard’s apartment?

A day passed by without any results and Garrus went to bed sick to his stomach. He couldn’t have slept anyway, he reasoned- his leg hurt so bad that he tasted bile in the back of his throat, and the only reason he was sitting down was because he couldn’t find her in the light let alone the dark. He picked up his datapad instead of trying to pretend as if he was going to get any rest.

His background was a picture of her, grinning up at him and just a _little_ bit tipsy. He remembered taking the picture after the party in her apartment- she was making a heart with her fingers and wearing her oversized _I'm Commander Fucking Shepard_ t-shirt. He'd remedied _that_ situation soon after snapping the photo. He stared at it dully, remembering the next morning when he'd caught her on his datapad setting the picture up. _I'm better looking than the default night sky background,_ she'd said, leaning over to nuzzle him absently.

 _Better looking than the whole universe,_ he'd agreed sleepily.

He had a whole gallery full of photos of her. They had the same pad and both kept them on Shep's desk, so occasionally she would grab the wrong one. There were pictures of her and Tali getting drunk and watching _Fleet and Flotilla,_ Grunt watching an old human documentary about dinosaurs, Miranda cutting out the ratsnest that Shep had made out of her hair...

"Where the hell are you, Shepard?" he muttered, throwing the datapad back onto the desk. "How am I supposed to find you?"

. . . . .

He dreamt that he found her. He dreamt that she did what she'd done when Sovereign's leg had busted through the window of the Presidium, when he'd thought she'd died defeating the geth. He imagined her climbing over the rubble of the Presidium, ready to face to Council and ready to fall against him. He had his own leg in the dream as well and was able to lift her and help her to the medbay.

When he woke up his neck hurt in addition to his leg, and he pulled himself to his feet robotically. His cot was uncomfortable on a regular day- Faust had all but insisted he go up to the captain's cabin and make himself comfortable with her, but he couldn't now that she wasn't there.

He made his way out into the crew floor and found Miranda, Kasumi, and Zaeed. "We're on it today, Vakarian," Zaeed said, downing the last bit of his coffee.

"Chakwas wants to check your leg," Miranda added, gesturing to the doctor behind the window.

"No," he said simply, grabbing a cup of coffee marked dextro. He could tell the woman anything she wanted to know about his leg- it wasn't bleeding, it hurt so bad that his head would rush sometimes, and he would walk on it for as long as it would support him.

"She'll be pretty pissed off when we find her if she finds out we let you work yourself ragged on a new prosthetic," Kasumi argued, and he appreciated that she said _when,_ not _if._

 _"_ I'm going to find her," he said with an air of finality, then took the coffee with him as he headed up to the CIC to take the shuttle to the station. Joker was standing near the door, looking nervous.

"Should you be-"

"See you later Joker." Garrus cut him off smoothly, not even pausing to look at him. He was going to bring Shep back, and if he ended up collapsing from the effort then no one could ever accuse him of abandoning her.

. . . . .

He never found Shepard, but the Alliance did. Soldiers heard her warbling for air under a pile of rubble north of the Presidium. It was a maintenance control room that had taken her down, somewhere that Garrus hadn't known existed. She was still alive when they rushed her to the hospital, and a few hours later Garrus was limping as fast as he could towards the medical ship they'd stored her in.

They wouldn't let him go see her. When he asked, they wouldn't tell him if she was okay. He angrily insisted that he was her damn boyfriend and he wanted to know what was going on- that he was only fifteen tiers lower than the Primarch, that he was a turian veteran, that he was Garrus _fucking_ Vakarian and the XO of her ship- but with no paperwork and no proof they apologized, but maintained that it was against policy to feed him updates.

He returned the next day with proof. He had the papers that marked him as the Normandy’s executive officer, he had his Hierarchy papers- unfortunately, the Alliance policy ever since word of indoctrination had spread was that patients were not to be seen by anyone that wasn’t immediate family, and even then under heavy guard. Garrus offered to take off the fake leg _(“What can I do to her if I can’t stand up?”)_ but the front desk insisted that it wouldn’t be necessary.

“I’m sorry Mr. Vakarian but until I get word from Admiral Hackett or Shepard herself, we can’t risk letting you in,” the woman said sympathetically. He wanted to throw something- _Hackett couldn’t be contacted, comms are down everywhere, you aren’t going to let me sit with my dying girlfriend._

Instead, he sat down in the waiting room and rested his head in his hands, taking deep, even breaths. Shepard was alive, probably, and getting treatment. He would have to hang on to that for now, and figure out a way to make himself comfortable on chairs built for humans.

. . . . .

It took three weeks, but Shepard’s launch into coherence was marked by a grunt that jolted Garrus out of his rest, and a biotic explosion. She staggered out into the hallway, weak but propelled forward by the lingering effects of her charge, and he stood up feeling faint. Personnel weren’t sure who to try and stop first- him from hurting her, or her from hurting him. She was clearly upset and afraid, but when she realized it was _him_ grabbing her arms and holding her still?

The biotics faded and she slumped against him. “Am I okay?” she asked, her voice hoarse.

“Come here and we’ll ask the doctors,” he said, shifting her to his good side. He supported her at the same time she supported him, his balance shot by the fake leg and her balance shot by what he assumed was probably several blows to the head. They made their weary way back to her hospital room and he helped her back onto her bed as well as he could. “You have to tell them I’m allowed in to see you,” he told her.

In true Shepard fashion, she grabbed whoever was closest to her. It was a nurse, a very fresh one who had clearly not been working long before the war. She yelped when Faust grabbed her and shook a bit under the Commander’s remarkably even gaze. “This is Garrus fucking Vakarian and I have to _tell you_ to let him in to see me?” she demanded. He was impressed- her words hadn’t lost their punch even under painkillers.

“P-Policy ma’am,” the nurse stammered.

“Shove your policy. Garrus Vakarian is allowed in and so is the rest of my fucking crew. Speaking of which, why hasn’t anyone called Miranda Lawson yet?” she demanded. Garrus grinned a little.

“She couldn’t get within five feet of the place- still flagged as Cerberus, Commander,” he reported.

“Shove your ‘commander’ and send someone to go get Miranda. She fucking built the damn body, she knows how to put it back together. Give her my credit chit in case she needs anything that won’t be generously donated by the hospital- is this a hospital? Where am I?” She turned back to Garrus, her fist still bunched in the nurse’s scrubs.

He gently untangled her and gestured for the nurse to go and get Miranda. “It’s an Alliance hospital ship within the Citadel’s orbit. It’s been three months since they found you, only a few days after the Crucible destroyed the Reapers,” he said, feeling relief wash over him. He remembered the SR-1’s automated voice: _logged- the commanding officer is aboard- XO Vakarian stands relieved._

“Is EDI okay?” she asked immediately. He nodded with a frown.

“Why wouldn’t she be?” he asked, and she sighed, tapping her fingers irritably against the bedframe. He wondered if her medication was wearing off- he was about to ask her if she wanted more when she continued.

“Don’t panic when I tell you this, okay?” she asked. He nodded. “I might be indoctrinated.” He stayed very quiet for a second, suddenly worried that maybe he was asleep. Maybe she hadn’t woken up yet and he was having a weird nightmare.

“You wanna explain that, Shep?” he asked.

“When the Crucible wasn’t firing, I passed out. When I woke up I was- I was in a place, like a ship, with a presence that wasn’t organic. It took the form of an organic, but wasn’t one,” she explained.

“Like the Leviathan.”

“Yes! It was like the Leviathan in my head. And it wanted me to choose what to do with the Reapers, what I wanted to Crucible to do, but I didn’t trust it. I was… _terrified,_ because it said I could destroy the Reapers, but it would destroy all synthetic life. The other two options were to control them like the Illusive Man tried to, or to… meld with them. Make everyone in the galaxy a weird mesh between organic and synthetic, and I was _going_ to do that but… I didn’t trust it. I took a gamble, hoping EDI and the geth would be okay. They are, right?” she asked, and he nodded.

“You don’t think any of it happened outside of your head, though?” This was wild, but Shepard had led him weirder places. She nodded, fiddling compulsively with her bed sheets. “Maybe we’ll keep it to ourselves,” he offered, trying to find a place on her to touch that didn’t look injured. “You wouldn’t be indoctrinated anymore, not with all the Reapers rendered nonfunctional. We’ll say something if you start acting up.”

“Do you believe me though?” she asked, grabbing his hand heedless of her injuries.

“Of course I do, Shep. I’ve always believed you,” he promised. She smiled a little- she was missing a few teeth and her face was bashed up, but he was so happy she was alive that everything else could come later.

. . . . .

Miranda came and worked her magic- Faust slept on and off, ate with more vigor that she ever had, and asked incessant questions about how the galaxy was coping. EDI came by with Joker to verify that she was definitely alive and functional as ever, and to partake in _traditional sickbed rituals._ She brought flowers and showed vids of human comedians, while Joker tried to sneak in some proper junk food.

Tali called from her home planet, along with one of the Geth that were programmed into her suit (who went by the name of _Rocket_ and acted as _Admiral Zorah’s personal bodyguard_ while in their own hardware). She gave reports on Rannoch, how they were lucky that the Reapers hadn’t had any interest in the planet outside of the Geth. “Any structures are as in tact as can be expected, and having the Geth is a _huge_ help. Rocket and I kick ass- whenever they go down, I just fix them right up,” she said enthusiastically.

Faust had to be told about Garrus’ leg too. Her memory of the fight to get to the beacon was blurry at best, so when Kasumi tattled on him for overworking himself on his injury, they had to relive it together. “The Reaper flipped a few vehicles and one of them crushed my leg before rolling away. It was too far gone to save, and most medical stations aren’t equipped to handle cloning yet. I’ve been on a prosthetic since I woke up,” he explained evenly.

“And you’ve been tearing ass through the broken down Citadel to find me?” she asked angrily. He shrugged guiltily and she rolled her eyes. He couldn’t explain to her that finding her had become a goal that had kept him from just… giving up. He’d never been good at adjusting to change, and been even worse when that change wasn’t explicitly controlled by him. Finding her would have been his atonement for leaving her in the first place. When the nurse came in, Faust gestured to Garrus. “Check his leg,” she said firmly.

“I’m sorry ma’am, I’m only authorized to work on Alliance personnel,” he said carefully.

“He’s the executive officer of an Alliance ship, now check the fucking leg,” she snapped. Faust withered under bureaucratic command, and it was beginning to show. As Garrus rolled up his pant leg and unstrapped his prosthetic, he took comfort in the fact that they still had that much in common. She might’ve gone rogue like him if it meant she got to keep the Normandy.

The limb was strained but otherwise fine- he’d been resting just as much as she was, now that Miranda was there to speed up her recovery process. Faust seemed satisfied enough with that, and reached out to squeeze his hand. “Did you find me in the end?” she asked. He shook his head.

“Alliance soldiers. I’m sorry Shepard,” he added, because it was something to apologize for. He’d promised to stay with her through everything, and left her. He’d promised to find her in the destruction, and been too slow. The best he could do was sit at her bedside and wait, because he didn’t know anything about human biology.

“I’m glad you didn’t,” she muttered, kissing his hand. “I probably looked like a bag of hamburger meat- I think I’ve fucked you up enough since meeting you.” He laughed, because that was exactly what his dad had said when Garrus quit C-Sec. _Shepard’s done enough to ruin your life._

“We’ve got a whole lifetime to traumatize each other now,” he reminded her. “I’ll get you back for it.” She grinned at him, better looking than the whole galaxy even with the jagged scars that hadn’t yet faded.

“Yeah, we do,” she whispered, leaning over to bump his forehead with hers. Those little words finally hit home, right in the centre of his chest. Shepard was _alive._ He was _alive._

And they had forever now.

**Author's Note:**

> -finger guns- nebulaad.tumblr.com/ask and prompt me if you're feeling it


End file.
